Golden Goals (1972)

When I was a kid in the early 1980s, a trip to the local petrol station in my Dad's car didn't provide much in the way of excitement for me. Having filled up the tank and handed over his money in the forecourt shop, he'd return to the car with nothing more than a bunch of tokens for a free whisky tumbler and very little else. Had we been doing the exact same thing in the late 1970's, I might have been handed a small plastic Smurf as a special treat, or at the beginning of the Seventies, even an Esso World Cup Coin.

It seems I largely missed out on the petrol/football tie-ins that were so prominent in the early-70's. Everyone always thinks of Esso as being the masters of marketing where that's concerned (and rightly so), yet one little-known company had a go at cashing in on football fervour too - and made a decent job of it.

I say 'little-known company' - in fact it was a regional petrol company that was owned by Esso, not that anyone was really aware of that at the time. Cleveland Petrol had started out in the 1930's selling ethanol fuel in the north-east of England, but just before their forecourts were fully rebranded to Esso, they had the chance to embark on one or two football-related trade campaigns.

Golden Goals just happened to be a tie-in of sorts with ITV's The Big Match and it followed a familiar format. In the traditional manner, customers spending £1 on petrol at Cleveland stations were offered a free gift; in this case, a packet containing a solitary sticker. It doesn't sound like much, but the sticker was quite large and often split into two or three separate smaller images. Those images could then be stuck into an accompanying album (price: 20p) which doubled up nicely as a hardback reference book for the discerning young football fan.

If you lived in London or the South East back in 1972, you'd know that Golden Goals was The Big Match's answer to Match of the Day's 'Goal of the Month' competition on the BBC. Luckily for fans of 'Shoot' (the ITV football show in the north-east of England), they got to see The Big Match often during the 1971-72 season. That's because the Tyne Tees cameras were often sent away to cover horse racing at Redcar or Newcastle, so to fill in, they'd broadcast The Big Match instead.

The Golden Goals book was 'compiled by Jimmy Hill and Brian Moore', and following a brief foreword by The Bearded One, there were regular references to the Big Match goalfest throughout. More than 70 pages of illustrations were provided, showing how various important goals were scored and the players that were involved in scoring them. Coupled with the words of Martin Tyler, those aforementioned stickers completed many of the pages, showing the interplay between players, their positioning on the pitch and the importance of the match itself - three things that Jimmy Hill was always excellent at explaining on TV.

The 1966 World Cup Final and the following tournament in 1970 were, as you'd expect, still fresh in the memory when the book was created, but they were by no means the be-all-and-end-all of this interesting compendium. A wide range of subjects - and great goals - were explored and explained in full colour and fine detail, from FA Cup giant killing to the great strikers of the 20th Century.

Specific teams were also given special treatment. Manchester United's 'goal power' looked at the awesome strike partnership of Bobby Charlton, Denis Law and George Best, while Arsenal's route to double-winning glory was also brought into sharp focus. There was even room to look at local rivalries within British football and the great teams of international football - neither of which had anything directly to do with great goals, but were beautifully illustrated all the same.

The concept of Golden Goals as a book along with its accompanying stickers was beautifully executed in a very subtle way. Whereas Panini and their ilk introduced the concept of albums containing many hundreds of stickers in a single collection, Cleveland's version had only 41, yet there's never a feeling of 'if only there were more' about it. The stickers are not intrinsically vital to the book because the book is a fine piece of work in its own right. And yet although the stickers only played a complementary role, you still got that feeling of joy when your Dad handed you a pastel blue packet at a Cleveland Petrol station, and you still had the pleasure of sticking your stickers into the book, thereby making it even better than it was.

This 'less is more' approach showed how Panini might have developed their collections in later years, and may even have avoided their demise of the early 1990's had they done so. By producing a hardback book packed with lots of information and far fewer stickers, Cleveland showed cleverness in creating something more substantial than a basic sticker album yet still had the allure of building a collection within it.

And while everyone was waiting for the video recorder to be invented, what better way to remember great goals than to study them in illustrated form, page by page? This book had them by the dozen and celebrated them with real flare and integrity. Oh, and the petrol came in quite handy too.

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Videoblog 6: The Encyclopedia of World Football (Marshall Cavendish, 1980)

Way back in July 2013 when we recorded our podcast on Football Books, Rich asked Chris whether there were any books he loved enough to warrant him running back into a burning house to rescue from its raging inferno. Chris answered that one particular title would be worthy of that life-threatening course of action, namely the Encyclopedia of World Football.

Sixteen months on, Chris finally tells you all why he loved the book so much in Videoblog 6 (see below). For fans of football kits, badges and general miscellanea, this is a great old book that's well worth hunting down on eBay and other online auction sites.

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The Guinness Book of Soccer Facts & Feats (1979)

There was a day, long, long ago, when the name of Guinness loomed large in the literary world. You could buy The Guinness Book of Car Facts & Feats, The Guinness Book of British Hit Singles, The Guinness Book of Wild Flowers... I'm also led to believe there was a long-running series of books about people breaking records, too, but let's not get sidetracked by that. Back in the 1970's, if you wanted to feed your brain with morsels of football-related knowledge, The Guinness Book of Soccer Facts & Feats was the book to read.

The first edition of Jack Rollin's kick-and-run compendium was published in 1978 and four more were released, the last of which arrived in book shops in 1983. I was recently lucky enough to purchase a copy of the second edition, and as you'd expect, it really does pack in more facts than Stephen Fry on speed.

The level of detail at times is staggering, right from the moment you peruse the inside front and rear covers displaying the winning records of all League Championship-winning sides from 1889 onwards. Not only do you get the final points tallies and goal difference stats, but also the number of players used in each squad and the number of ever-present players they contained. And that's before you get to the Introduction.

The first main section of the book is 'Milestones' which uses as its basis the original laws of football from 1872. This in itself is a revelation as one discovers some elements of the game that have long since been changed or removed altogether. Who knew that after a goal was scored, the teams would always change ends? And the rule that states "No player shall wear nails, except such as have their heads driven in flush with the leather... on the soles or heels of his boots" only makes the mind boggle further at the way football used to be.

Further revisions of the laws are detailed and the wonderment continues. The two-handed throw-in? That arrived TEN years after the first rules were formed. Goal nets didn't arrive for a further eight years after that. And when were numbers first worn on shirts in an FA Cup Final? In 1933 - SIXTY-TWO years after the first FA Cup competition took place.

This fire-cracker set of facts and figures gets the book off to a great start, but it's swiftly followed by another great section called 'British Soccer - League Club Stories'. Here, each of the clubs in the English and Scottish Leagues has a paragraph devoted to it and a notable story from its history. Some of the tales told by Rollin are delightfully entertaining and brilliantly worded. Here's my favourite one, all about Hartlepool United:

"On 27 November 1916 a doomed German Zeppelin, caught in the glare of searchlights and in flames from the fire of a persistent Royal Flying Corps pilot's armoury, jettisoned its remaining bombs as it made for the sea. Two of them shattered the main stand at Hartlepool United's ground. After the war the club claimed £2,500 compensation form the German government. The claim was relentlessly pressed by correspondence, but the only tangible reply was another bomb on the ground in the Second World War."

What then follows is an admittedly drier section that details the highest and lowest number of league wins, league goals and league defeats by various teams, but relief quickly comes in the eight pages of colour photographs that succeed it. Although the focus here is on the important figures of the day - Brian Clough, Trevor Francis and Ron Greenwood among them - there's also a lovely double-page spread showing a montage of football programmes from around the world.

With that out of the way, it's back into a seemingly unending mass of rudimentary facts and figures about British league clubs and international cup competitions. It's here that the informal tone from earlier in the book gives way to serious statistics, but reading this as a kid, you'd have been soaking up all this knowledge like a sponge. It's what you did when you were younger, and if your juvenile self was keen to learn who Manchester City played during their 1976-77 UEFA Cup run or something just as irrelevant to the average man on the street, this book came up trumps again and again.

After a second selection of colour photographs (this time from the 1978 World Cup) and an assessment of world football and its key players and competitions, the book ends with a Miscellany that again makes one smile with its detail. We learn that Robert Howell of Sheffield was the only gypsy to play for England and that Albert Iremonger of Notts County was, at 1.96 metres, the tallest player to appear regularly in the Football League. (Think Peter Crouch, but seven centimetres shorter.)

Surely, though, the final word about this excellent book has to go to its feature on the 'Football League's Foreign Legion' - those players born overseas that were plying their trade in England during the 1978-79 season. If anyone's curious to know what football was like 36 years ago, just be aware that all 13 foreign players were listed in a space no bigger than three inches by ten on one of its pages. Time marches on, but books like this provide the context by which we judge modern-day football, and beautifully so.

-- Chris Oakley

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Review: 'Admiral: Kit Man' by Bert Patrick

These days it seems perfectly acceptable to discuss football kit design without having any knowledge of its bounteous history. The trouble is, few people can speak with any authority about the production of football kits in Britain, which is why the release of Bert Patrick's new book has caused such a ripple of excitement.

'Admiral: Kit man' is a rare chance to find out how one of the great football brands rose to prominence in the 1970's and disappeared almost completely thereafter, as described by its figurehead and managing director. What you'll gain from reading the title depends largely on your prior knowledge of football kit design, but even a self-imposed expert will find something of note to take away from this pleasant paperback.

The story of Admiral, the Leicester-based football kit makers, begins in the 1960's when Patrick became the owner of a local underwear manufacturer, Cook & Hurst. Sensing a need to diversify in order to generate greater profits, the company rightly gauged an increase in football fanaticism after the 1966 World Cup and began making plans to produce and supply kit independently for teams far and wide.

What follows is a remarkable story of success forged through the amiable nature and astute dealings of the author. Starting off with the securing of a kit contract to supply Don Revie's Leeds United team in the early 70's, we learn of Patrick's impressive ability to gain further business with many other clubs thereafter. National team contracts also followed as England and Wales jumped on the Admiral bandwagon.

Two of the many photos seen in 'Admiral: Kit Man'

As Bert Patrick added more and more domestic signings to his portfolio, he started looking further afield and soon teams in Europe, the Middle East and the USA were adopting the Admiral brand. Yet just as business was truly booming for Patrick and his company, the growing market for cheap foreign imported merchandise started to impact greatly on Admiral's once bulging revenues. Within a few short years, Patrick was forced to sell Admiral to a Dutch Oil company and by the early 1980's, their name had become a virtual non-entity in British football.

The tale is an interesting one and well worth telling. We hear of Patrick's many meetings with important figures from British football history and his occasional dealings with the BBC and the Football Association, to say nothing of the many business trips he made around the world. All very fascinating, but after reading the book I was still left with a hunger to get a bit more detail. What of the kit designs that were never adopted or the fine details of some of the contracts he helped to rubber-stamp? What were Bert Patrick's favourite kit designs and what did he think of the work of Admiral's competitors?

Unfortunately these are watered down by the copious colour photographs showing off all too many Admiral kits. On average, there's a photo on every third pages of this book, and that's too much given that most readers will already know what the great Admiral kits looked like. John Devlin's excellent kit illustrations also make an appearance to expand on the imagery further still, but I'd have kept those and cut the photographs by at least half in return for more of Bert Patrick's dialogue.

John Devlin's kit illustrations, as featured in the book

Though the text is fine, in and of itself, it's sadly let down by the obvious misspelling of the names of players and managers. With references to Keith Bircumshaw, John Lyle and Franz Bechenbauer, the book loses a little of its credibility - something that could have been easily avoided if someone had bothered to double-check the details. The flow of the narrative is also vague at times, not always following a chronological order and liable to diversion at odd tangents.

For all that, though, it's still a very nice book, and it leaves you feeling an undeniable admiration for the author and the way he brought so much colour and interest to British soccer throughout the 1970's. Many happy memories of Admiral's fine kit designs are brought to mind as you turn every page, and you can't help wishing the company was still as prominent today as it was all those years ago. Perhaps one day it will be, but for now it's nice to know that Bert Patrick's achievements have been proudly recorded for future generations to read.

'Admiral: Kit Man' by Bert Patrick is available via Amazon UK, Waterstones and all good book stores. RRP: £10.99

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Attic Kit Collection Book - Now Available!

It's been a long time coming with many many MANY weekends spent photographing kits, editing said photos and then writing stuff about each one, but it's finally here!

The finished product is a 98 page hardback featuring over 200 different kits (almost my entire collection).

At present there's only a few copies available and will be done on a first come first served basis. If by some miracle those sell, I'll see how many extra copies are needed and order some more, though I think I've only got a few more days to do so, so be quick!

The price is £29.99 + P&P 

Not cheap I know, but that's economies of scale for you...

UK Postage is £3.90 2nd class or £4.30 1st class. If you're outside the UK, I'll give you a postage quote before you commit.

So, if you want one, fill in the form below and I'll contact you to sort out payment etc.

UPDATE: Please note these are now Sold Out!

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Esso 'Squelchers', 1970

The squelch - not just, as you'd expect, the term for the watery noise you get when you tread on a frog. Squelch also means 'to silence someone in an argument'. Who knew?

Esso knew. The giant oil company with the phonetic name (S-O = Standard Oil) were riding the crest of a wave after the enormous success of their 1970 World Cup Coin Collection and were looking for a football-related follow-up to maintain the constant flow of drivers into their UK petrol station forecourts. What they came up with was another beautifully marketed collection, once again aimed at the younger market.

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FC Football Graphics (1998)

Sometimes it seems that modern football is a purely visual experience. TV commentaries, tasteless hot dogs and noisy supporters aside, the game as we know it today really is a feast for the eyes. What we don’t realise is how much of this imagery we all take for granted, or how much work goes into creating the visual stimuli we see. For that reason, Jeremy Leslie and Patrick Burgoyne’s book, FC Football Graphics, is a worthwhile attempt to make us re-evaluate the things that we see.

Given the subject matter, it’s only natural that the book is comprised mainly of pictures, gloriously and tantalisingly presented with an invitation to dwell slowly on each one. Where text is concerned, most of it appears in the lengthy introduction where we’re reminded that the worlds of fashion, literature and music have all exchanged influences with the beautiful game. After that, however, it’s largely pictures all the way, save for a few descriptive sentences on each pair of pages.

To begin with, there’s a selection of English club badges - the motifs that appear everywhere from Sky Sports to the Daily Mirror. Then comes the MLS equivalent (as it was when the book was published in 1998), notable by its inclusion of several club badges that are no longer in use some 16 years later.

Later we see examples of World Cup mascots and logos, but fascinatingly we’re reminded of the everyday bits of ephemera that circle the world of football like the rings around Saturn. National Lottery scratchcards, betting coupons, food and drink packaging… these are the things that blend into the background of our everyday lives, but which we never stop to appreciate.

When it comes to the match-day experience, however, one cannot look much beyond football shirts and strips as the ultimate embodiment of design, style and colour. The book shows us fans wearing their team shirts outside the ground, various shirt designs of all types - even the sponsor logos and manufacturer logos that dominate the shirt itself. All of them contribute to the tidal wave of imagery that constantly washes over us, but here we’re reminded to stop and actually look - to willingly appreciate the detail and complexities that lie within.

If you throw in football websites, magazines, video games, TV presentation, advertising and everything in between, you soon realise that the very essence of being a football supporter and all the experiences and memories we've had are based on the graphics that this book highlights. Take all of it away, and our football world suddenly becomes very uninteresting and dull.

And just think: this is less than 100 pages of content that was put together over a decade ago. Now imagine how many more visuals could be included in a 2014 version. If nothing else, FC Football Graphics makes the mind boggle and trains the eye to see football visuals as art rather than the wallpaper we take for granted every day.

FC Football Graphics

by Jeremy Leslie & Patrick Burgoyne

Publisher: Thames & Hudson

Publish date: 1998

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News of the World Football Annual 1966-67

As the dust began to settle on the 1966 World Cup, English football realigned its sights once again on domestic matters. For the top club managers in the land, it was time to stiffen the sinews and summon up the blood. Many knew that great success was within touching distance, whether it be in the League, cups or European competitions. Hope was in the air and for some it seemed only a matter of time before a piece of silverware was rightfully earned.

In the News of the World Football Annual 1966-67, Bill Shankly spoke of his team’s growing appetite for continental glory. Liverpool had reached the European Cup semi-finals at their first attempt in 1964-65 and followed it with a defeat in the final of the Cup-Winners’ Cup against Borussia Dortmund the following season. Now they were ready to try and go one better in the European Cup of 66/67 and Shankly was in confident mood.

“Not once in 1965-66 did we lose two successive matches” he said. “It was a testimony to the players that they bounced back after each defeat. And only 14 men were called upon in our 43 League and Cup fixtures; one of them, Bobby Graham, appearing only in the final game away to Nottingham Forest.”

The history books show that the increasing pressures on Liverpool’s minimal band of players resulted in a demanding and ultimately unsuccessful season for them. Their European Cup campaign started in stuttering fashion with a play-off win against Romanian side Petrolul Ploieşti, only to end in the Second Round with a thumping 7-3 aggregate defeat to a Johan Cruyff-inspired Ajax. They fared little better on the home front - 10 defeats led them to a fifth place finish in the League Championship, while their local rivals Everton ended their FA Cup run in the fifth round.

Bobby Charlton was similarly hopeful about Manchester United’s upcoming season. Having recently received the Footballer of the Year award, the England international was pleased at his personal fortunes, but less happier with his team’s exit from the previous season’s European Cup at the semi-final stage.

“Don’t let me beat about the bush” said Charlton. “Defeat by Partizan of Yugoslavia… was a shattering blow to United. After our great 5-1 Lisbon victory over Benfica, we felt it was our year - and that we could become the first British club to win the prize.”

Little did Bobby Charlton know that exciting times were ahead. The 1966-67 season saw Celtic become the first British team to win the European Cup while Manchester United won the First Division championship. That in turn allowed United to compete in the European Cup in 1967-68 and go on to become the second British winner of the trophy.

Tommy Docherty seemed less happy with his lot as Chelsea manager. His side were facing a season that for once didn't involve playing in Europe, although it wasn't for the want of trying. Beaten by Sheffield Wednesday in the FA Cup semi-finals the season before and thumped 5-0 by Barcelona in an Inter-Cities Fairs Cup semi-final play-off, Docherty felt that his side were on the verge of greatness.

“Now the target for Chelsea in the months ahead is crystal clear. With a playing staff which I believe I have strengthened as the result of incoming and outgoing transfers, we must establish ourselves as England’s Number One club. And that means winning League or Cup, or both if it can be done.”

Yet again, Chelsea came close but not close enough. Though the 1966-67 season started badly for Docherty when Peter Osgood broke his leg in October 1966, Chelsea ultimately reached the FA Cup Final in 1967, but were beaten 2-1 by Tottenham. A ninth-place finish in the League completed another disappointing season for The Blues and in October 1967, Docherty resigned as manager. Ironically, most of the team he’d put together finally did win some silverware a few years after his departure and undoubtedly became one of the top clubs in the country around the turn of the decade.

The News of the World Annual once again provided a review of the previous season’s events in its ‘Football Diary’ feature. Here we get a tantalising glimpse into not just the world of football but British life in the mid-to-late sixties.

Before the 1965 season got underway, Fulham’s chairman and comedian Tommy Trinder received a £50 fine for “failing to give written undertaking not to repeat remarks he’d made on TV about referees.” Alan Ball, Nobby Stiles and Pat Crerand were also out of pocket before the World Cup-winning season. All three were fined between £75 and £100 “following incidents in Continental matches.”

At Manchester City it was all change as the Maine Road club appointed Joe Mercer as their new manager, shortly followed by his assistant, Malcolm Allison. Unable to play their part as the season started, however, were Gordon Banks who had a broken wrist, and Luton’s David Pleat who had a leg fracture. For one of them, a full recovery would be vital to England’s chances of becoming world champions. (Clue: It wasn’t David Pleat.)

In October, the first soccer match shown on closed-circuit TV took place as Coventry City’s fans watched their team’s match at Cardiff on four big screens erected at Highfield Road. Coventry played in the red and white striped shirts of Stoke to aid visibility for their fans watching 120 miles away. Coventry went on to win 2-1.

Hooliganism was on the increase with disturbances taking place at Manchester United, Burnley and Huddersfield, while in November, England’s 16-month unbeaten run of 10 games came to an end after a 3-2 defeat to Austria at Wembley. They became only the third team after Hungary and Sweden to beat England at home.

November 1965 was also the month when Brian Clough’s managerial career began as he took the reigns at Hartlepools United. The following month, future Northern Ireland boss Billy Bingham started his managerial career at Southport.

At the start of 1966, however, the worrying increase in off-the-field violence took a shocking turn for the worse as Everton manager Harry Catterick was “kicked and knocked down by young Everton hooligans following defeat at Blackpool.”

On the field, things weren't much better. In February 1966, a match between Leeds and Valencia in the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup saw both teams dismissed from the field for 10 minutes after a “fierce brawl” as police intervened to bring the matter under control. After the match resumed, three players were sent off, one of which was Jack Charlton.

In mid-March, a flurry of transfer activity saw Manchester City sign Colin Bell from Bury for £40,000 after Mike Summerbee had arrived at Maine Road the previous August. Allan Clarke switched from Walsall to Fulham for £35,000 while Rodney Marsh travelled the short distance from Fulham to QPR for £15,000.

At the end of the month, the World Cup had been stolen while on display in London and found again a week later by a dog called Pickles. Where shock value was concerned, that was nothing - in early April, Bobby Moore supposedly wanted to leave West Ham and was ‘seeking a new club,’ according to the Annual.

Finally, as the season ended amidst further reports of hooliganism, sendings-off and other turmoil, it was time for awards to be handed out to the biggest achievers. Manchester City won promotion to the First Division, Liverpool won the League Championship, Everton won the FA Cup, and the Football Writers Association made Bobby Charlton their Footballer of the Year.

A season of highs and lows reviewed and another one eagerly anticipated by the News of the World Football Annual. Yet for all that, the book missed out on the greatest event of them all. Because of an early printing deadline, the World Cup of 1966 was regrettably absent from any of its pages. Ah, never mind. It’s not like England were going to win it or anything.

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Shoot! Soccer Quiz Book 1980

Regular Football Attic contributor Al Gordon of God, Charlton & Punk Rock takes us back to 1980 and Shoot! magazine's quiz book of the year ...

They say it’s the small things in life that count, well at least the less fortunate amongst us do. But a small thing for one person could be colossal for another, one man’s junk etc. And as you unwittingly stumble upon the discovery of one of these colossal moments, everything else in life fades away to a place it cannot hurt you, whilst you merrily immerse yourself with a relish (not literally you Americans) and a delight that you and only you could ever experience. I've just had one of these occurrences, totally unexpectedly, and apart from causing me to gasp loudly, it dominated my day as only football nostalgia can.

There is a lady at work, Sam, who comes from a large family with plenty of brothers. As she was rummaging through her mother’s loft for the Christmas tree and its assorted ornamentation, she discovered a box of old annuals. Look-in, Battlestar Galactica, all kinds of eighties memorabilia, but amongst these lay a little treat especially for the rose-spectacled enthusiast of the beautiful game. And there it was on her desk, unannounced yet boldly seductive, for me to enjoy. The 1980 Shoot! Soccer Quiz Book.

As far as I can tell, this hardback offspring of the magazine was a yearly affair spanning a decade, the earliest I've found being from 1973, the latest 1984 although there may well be others. This particular copy had obviously gone to a good home as the crossword was correctly completed and a couple of the colour pictures of the owners’ favourite players had been neatly cut out and re-homed in a presumably bulging scrap book.

There is just the one crossword; it’s not that kind of quiz book. This is more akin to the pub quiz format, a book full of football questions with the answers given upside down at the bottom of the page. How many questions there are in total I do not know, and I'm sure as not going to count them for you, but I’d edge my bets at around four hundred. Thirty years ago one magazine employee must have spent a month every year compiling these; it’s easy to tell which he conjured up first as they require a little knowledge –

‘During his league career in Scotland, Manchester United striker Joe Jordan scored just one goal. Was it for Morton, Motherwell or Montrose?’

Remember this was 1980 and you couldn’t just get your smart phone out your pocket. Not that you’d need to for some of the others –

‘What colour shirts do Blackburn Rovers usually play in?’

That was obviously written on a Friday afternoon returning to the Shoot! Towers after a liquid lunch.

There are sections for just about every specialised subject, defenders, midfielders, managers, Welsh internationals, Scottish internationals, the FA Cup, the Scottish Cup, stars of the past and my favourite, soccer badges from the States. As I get older and my memory a little more distant, the questions do seem much tougher on the whole than they would have done then. Asking me scores and transfer fees from thirty years ago is testing, asking me which division the San Jose Earthquakes currently play in is just plain unfair. In fact any question from three decades ago with the word ‘currently’ in is rather flawed.

Of course with most of these old publications, the foremost pleasure is in the pictures. Photos of Trevor Francis running out in his Detroit Express kit, pages of wonderful Admiral shirts and tracksuits, Just Fontaine surrounded by half a dozen Adidas clad beauties adjacent to a jubilant Partick Thistle squad celebrating with the Scottish League Cup in the year of my birth. A percentage of these are in colour, the rest in black and white or a derivative thereof.

It was common in those days to give a coloured filter to the black and white image so that it appeared blue or red or some such which looks crude now but must have been funky and cutting edge in the sixties and just plain old affordable in 1980.

Page 32 is entitled ‘We put you on the spot’. Here there are four referees, Clive Thomas, Roger Kirkpatrick, Jack Taylor and Tom Reynolds. The question was to identify them; I obviously am far too young to remember any, but how I wish Kilpatrick still officiated matches today. Nicknamed Mr Pickwick on account of his astonishing sideburns, the quality of abuse Charlton’s covered end could shout in his general direction is somewhat staggering. Clive Thomas however looks like Mr Bean’s father. Scary stuff.

Having had my mind opened to these quiz books I searched eBay only to discover how readily available and inexpensive they are. Starting at just a couple of quid this particular Shoot! spin-off has evidently still yet to reach collectable status. I may just go to a boot sale on Sunday morning, there could be boxes of them.

Oh, and by the way, it was Morton. Just in case you were wondering.

Once again, our thanks go to Al for this great post. If you'd like to write an article for The Football Attic, contact us at admin [at] thefootballattic [dot] com or catch us on Twitteror Facebook.

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Got Not Got Book Spectacular

With Christmas just around the corner, we take a look at the latest books from the Got, Not Got authors, Derek Hammond & Gary Silke.

What could possibly be said about Got, Not Got that hasn't already been?  Not much if the glowing praise inside the latest incarnation is to be seen. There's even a quote from some 2 bit blog about Attics ;-)

Anyone who hasn't read a copy of the original Got, Not Got book is seriously missing out on a treat of nostalgia. OK, it's not a patch on The Football Attic Annual (what could be?), but it's nevertheless rammed full of sweet, sweet memories.

And so we come to its sequel...and we all know how tough it can be to produce a decent follow up - just look at Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen...hang on, the original was crap as well...this analogy isn't working. What I'm saying is, the original GNG was a masterpiece, so the pressure was really on to come up with the goods yet again. The problem with the past is, it's a finite resource...anything that was going to exist already has done and given the sheer weight of stuff already covered, would there possibly be enough to fill another book?


The answer is of course, yes. Not just a small yes, but a rather large one, as this time out, as well as coming up with another look at The Lost World Of Football (that's the title you see), there's also a bunch of club specific volumes and a further gem in the guise of 'What a Shot - Your Snaps of the Lost World of Football', which is a collection of readers' photos of football from years gone by. More of that later...for now we'll concentrate on the main course.

The LOST WORLD of Football

Following the same format as the original, which was billed as the A-Z of lost football, this runs through yet another alphabet of nostalgia, running from Airfix Footballers to Zetters.

Naturally with a book like this, it's impossible to cover everything in a review so I'll instead choose some of my favourite highlights.

Memories :)

Keeper Klobber - a whole page devoted to all things goalie, from Peter Bonetti gloves to some rather fetching ads for Sukan Sports. Right on the side of the page are two kit illustrations from the Reusch advert I gazed longingly at in the weeks leading up to Christmas in 1987. I never could decide which kit to get (silver and blue looked awesome, but yellow and black looked so much more the real deal) and so I never got one...

Filbert Street Revisited - a two page spread detailing a ridiculously accurate model of Leicester's ground circa 1979 courtesy of model maker Micky Bates.

Star Turns - the top 5 Player or Club 7" singles, featuring possibly the most terrifying artwork ever, courtesy of St. Etienne fan & pop star, 'Jacques Monty'.

Pocket Money Endorsements - "When it's the Best Patio Door v. The Rest, Trevor Brooking is on Therm-A-Stor's side" - nuff said!

AAAAARGH!

Part of the joy of a book like this is the little gems one might usually overlook. One of these is entirely non-football related, but still evokes that warm sense of nostalgia perfectly. Lurking at the bottom of one page is an image of a set of Ever Ready batteries (now more well known as Energisers). This may not mean much to a lot of people, but to me it captures that Christmas morning feel and takes me back to that first time I tried out my new Subbuteo floodlights.

There's a lovely pic of Highfield Road in there too...albeit covering casuals and hooligans, but hey, us Cov fans will take what we can these days ;-)

The item called "Football Unfunnies" takes the same tack that we did in our Backpass article on Shoot! magazine, that the majority of football cartoons just weren't funny.

For many readers, a real delight awaits in the "Posing in Your Kit" section, a couple of pages of readers' pics of themselves posing, as the title suggests, in their childhood kits. Quite how they failed to use this gorgeous pic of yours truly in full CCFC outfit I'm not sure, but there are plenty quality kits and matching hairstyles to go around. My personal favourite is of brothers David & Mark Jameson in Newcastle's classy 85-86 home and away outfits.

For me, it's not just the coverage of ephemera that make the LWOF a great read, but the reminiscences of the authors with titles such as 'In the Garage' and 'Long Hot Summer' providing a real personal touch which is sure to have readers nodding and smiling as their own memories come back.

Finally, there's a truly heartwarming section near the end under the banner 'You could send letters', which showcases a series of replies to letters from author Gary Silke to various clubs. Each one has clearly been typed by hand and though some of them do have a distinct air of the standard 'don't call us, we'll call you' response, the fact that someone somewhere had taken the time to reply is, in this age of computer generated responses, a truly beautiful thing, a phrase which neatly sums up the Lost World of Football

Got, Not Got - The Lost World of Manchester United

Alongside its bigger brother, the GNG team have released a series of club specific GNG books. These are naturally smaller affairs and have a slimmed down price tag of only £12.99. Very often with this sort of thing, the slimmed down tomes often just repeat what's already in the bigger book and leave you with a sense of disappointment. Not so here as these have a wealth of material all related to the relevant club. This one covers Manchester United and has 144 pages of Old Trafford related memorabilia. Again there's a vast amount on offer, with very little crossover from the main book.

I can't wait to get stuck into the Coventry one...what? There isn't one? This is just like my childhood all over again! ;-)

While there may not be a CCFC version, there are books available for Leeds and West Ham and I've no doubt there'll be others to follow.

What A Shot!

When this book landed in my lap, I thought I'd gone to retro heaven. While the above two may be choc full of facts and pics, this is pure photo based gold. The book is a compilation of photos from the authors alongside a host of those sent in from Mr. J. Public. The end result is a raft of over-exposed, grainy, often blurred and badly angled photos from days gone by and by god if it isn't one of the best collection of football photos known to man, then I don't know what is!

Its amateurish nature is what gives it its undeniable charm as we all recognise the sort of photos on show. Alas, I neglected to send any shots of my own in and so don't have the pleasure of seeing my own handiwork displayed, though there is a great shot of our very own Chris next to the vampiric looking Ray Reardon, the then famous snooker player.

Highlights include the previously mentioned David Jameson's shot of Mirandinha's first appearance at Newcastle; photos of the Baseball Ground both in its heyday and also after its demise; several other long since abandoned grounds in various states of decay and some serious floodlight porn.

A bad photo of...a bad photo!

As I say though, the real pleasure in this is the wealth of grainy shots only a 110 or 35mm Minolta from Dixons could produce and the sort of photo Boots would affix a sticker to, advising of how to not use the flash in close up or something about overexposure. If you have only ever lived in a world of digital cameras where any bad shot can be deleted in a heartbeat, this is not for you. If, like me, you waited with baited breath outside Snappy Snaps (or for them to arrive in the post from Truprint), then you will fall in love with the photos in What a Shot!

If you're in any doubt as to whether this book is worth it, I can only urge you to get it. For £12.99, it'd seriously be insane not to.

Still not convinced? (seriously?) You can take a sneak peek inside all 3 books by clicking on the sample chapters below.

Lost World of Football

Lost World of Man United

What a Shot!

Coming soon...we take a look at "Six Stickers", Adam Caroll-Smith's attempt to track down the players from the missing six stickers in his Permier League 96 album...and we have 5 copies to win!

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